


Ugly Dreams

by noelroeimfisher



Category: Shameless (US)
Genre: Fluff, M/M, pretty much
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-07-15
Updated: 2014-07-15
Packaged: 2018-02-08 22:13:14
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,580
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1958016
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/noelroeimfisher/pseuds/noelroeimfisher
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Mickey has a bad dream and it makes him grumpy. Very l o o s e l y inspired by a goofy scene from Flight of the Conchords.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Ugly Dreams

This was among Ian’s least favorite waking-up scenarios: without Mickey.  The rare and lonely feeling crept up on his sleeping form slowly, but it wasn’t long before he was blinking his eyes open to find Mickey lying on his back all the way on the other side of the bed, arms crossed, staring intently at the ceiling.  Ian furrowed his brow; the other side of the bed was definitely off-limits, too far,  _unnecessary_.  Ian had a thought about tossing this too-big bed into a massive fire and replacing it with a smaller one, but he quickly tried to unthink that thought because he remembered that they make good use of every inch of that bed when they use it for certain other activities.

“Why are you over there?” His morning voice was scratchy and quiet as he scooted closer to his boyfriend, wrapping an arm around his waist.  It felt much too early for anything at all to be happening.

“It’s about fuckin’ time.”  Mickey grumbled.  His arms were stubbornly crossed, but he was definitely not making any kind of effort to avert Ian’s cuddling.

Ian hummed inquisitively, his face buried in Mickey’s neck.

Mickey carefully considered at least six different responses, weighing the pros and cons of each, but ultimately decided on “Never mind.”  

Ian had already drifted back to sleep anyway.  Mickey rolled his eyes at nothing in particular, and it wasn’t long before he was lulled back to sleep as well, with the warm and tingly feeling of Ian’s consistent breathing against his skin. 

•••••

This was among Ian’s favorite waking-up scenarios: pressed into Mickey’s side.  There was a faint memory floating around of having already woken up once that morning, but Mickey smelled really nice and he was very soft and warm and whatever happened earlier didn’t seem to matter anymore.

They crawled out of bed together to begin the familiar hunt for yesterday’s clothes, which had been haphazardly scattered about the room in a hurry to feel each other the night before.  Ian discovered Mickey’s boxers first and tossed them over to him, hoping to get a good laugh out of him when they landed on his head, but no such luck.  Ian’s mind immediately flashed back to whatever it was that happened earlier, though the memory was still quite distant.

“You ok?”  Ian leaned over to pull a sock onto his left foot. 

“Fine.”

“Liar.”  Ian stared him down, searching for answers, but wasn’t sufficiently menacing due to being naked but for one sock, so Mickey simply responded with his best You-Know-What-You-Did squinty eyes.

“Mick, what?!  Did I kick you in my sleep or something?”

“You might as well have!”

“The fuck does that even mean??”

Mickey rolled his eyes, his lips pursing in frustration.  “Nothin’.  Never mind.”  He watched Ian lean over to grab something off the floor, studying the subtle movements of his muscles as he stood upright again, shirt in hand.  “Don’t wear that shirt, wear the other one.  The green one.”

But Ian threw the shirt to the floor in protest.  “I’m not putting on any fucking clothing until you tell me why you’re so grumpy.”

“I’m not grumpy!”  Mickey raised his voice before taking a moment to regard Ian’s naked figure.  “And that’s not a very effective threat, douchebag.” Mickey smirked, shifting his focus toward locating Ian’s pesky second sock because he looked like a fucking idiot without it.

“Well then I won’t take my clothes  _off_  until you tell me,” Ian teased.

Mickey frowned when Ian began to make good on that deadly threat, unceremoniously grabbing his boxers and jeans off the floor.  “Ian, it’s really nothing, I was being an asshole, forget about it.” 

“Can’t.”  He was frustrated, but he found the green shirt that was a little too small and added it to the pile in his hands to appease his grumpy boyfriend.

Mickey bit his lip and closed his eyes for a moment, taking a deep breath and releasing it, preparing himself to speak.  

“It’s not–.  It’s just– . Nah, man, forget it.”

“Mickey.”

“Whatever, just… I had a weird dream last night and you were–”

A knowing smile crept across Ian’s face.  “Woah, woah, woah.  Hang on, are you being grumpy because of something I did in a fucking dream?”

“I said I’m not grumpy!”

“Okay then, whatever the fuck you call this mood…” He gestured toward Mickey’s scrunched up face.  “Was this caused by something I did in your dream?”

Once it was out loud like that, it did sound pretty ridiculous.  “Maybe.”  Mickey smiled shyly; he felt incredibly dumb for having brought it up, but the way Ian was laughing with his whole body somehow seemed to be worth the embarrassment. 

“And?”  Ian sat on the edge of the bed, making it very clear that he wasn’t going to move on until he had answers.

“Fuck off, I told you it was nothing.”  Mickey turned to collect the last of his clothing from the floor.  Just as he pulled the t-shirt over his head, Ian’s hands were on his waist, roughly spinning him around until their faces were aligned.

“What did dream-me do?” 

Mickey looked down at Ian’s feet, laughing.  “You’re wearing one sock…  And dream-you is a fuckin’ asshole.”

“Would it help if I apologized?”

Mickey scoffed at the suggestion, but quickly realized that yes, an apology would feel pretty nice.  “Kind of.” 

“I’m sorry.”  

The gentle sincerity in Ian’s voice caught Mickey off guard and he wondered how he got so lucky that he found a boy who would genuinely apologize for something he hadn’t even done, just to make him feel better.  He sat on the edge of the bed, throwing the sock he’d found toward Ian before falling onto his back to stare at the ceiling again. 

“You’re gonna have to either put that on or take the other one off, I can’t deal with this.”  He made a flailing gesture toward Ian’s mismatched feet, and giggled when two socks came flying into his face.

“You’re gonna have to tell me what I just apologized for eventually.”

“It was just a dream, I shouldn’t have even mentioned it.”

Ian straddled his boyfriend on the bed, brushing the strand of dark hair out of Mickey’s eyes.  “No, Mickey, it obviously didn’t make you very happy.  Dreams have real-life meaning, you know?  Like I read one time that if you dream about falling, it means you’re feeling stressed about stuff.”

“You would believe that shit.”  Mickey grinned up at him; he not-so-secretly loved to hear about all the lame shit that Ian ‘read one time’.

Ian stared down at Mickey’s body, clenching his jaw in disapproval.  “Why are you wearing so many clothes?” 

•••••

_“Real-me would never say that.”_

It had taken a great deal of persistence all day, but Ian knew Mickey so well.  He knew about Mickey not wanting to say his thoughts out loud until they were fully formed in his head first.  He knew that it often takes an awfully long time for a thought to become fully formed.  But he also knew that sometimes it’s good to just blurt out how you fuckin’ feel before you even know what it means.  To just get an amorphous, unripe blob of a thought out of your own head and into someone else’s and then to try to make sense of it together.  He knew about always being careful not to push Mickey too far, and he also knew about balancing that care with how much he hated the idea of nervous thoughts festering in Mickey’s mind.

There had been a lot of “It’s nothing,” and “It shouldn’t even have bothered me,” and “It was just a stupid fuckin’ dream,” all day, but Ian knew better than to believe any of that.  It  _was_ something, and it  _did_  bother him, and dreams have actual meaning, real-life meaning, don’t they? 

It was nighttime and it was soft skin against soft skin in their bed again, Ian lying between Mickey’s legs, lazily sucking a pretty little mark into the soft patch of skin right above Mickey’s hipbone.  Neither had said spoken yet, but Ian’s fingers tracing patterns across Mickey’s chest were all the evidence in the world that Mickey was safe.

“You…you, uh, said I didn’t deserve you.” 

Ian shifted so they were eye to eye, though Mickey had trouble meeting his intense gaze.  “What?” 

“In my dream, you said I wasn’t good enough for you.”

This was fucking unacceptable.  Some part of Mickey believed that Ian actually felt that way.  Why else would he dream it? 

“Mickey, I’m so sorry, I – “

“You don’t have to fuckin’ apologize.  Jesus, it wasn’t even real.”  Mickey moved his hand to cover his face in shame, but Ian grabbed it instead, holding it firmly in his own.

“It made you sad.”

Mickey swallowed hard.  “…yeah.” 

_“Real-me would never say that.”_

“I know.”

“I’m serious.  Real-me thinks you’re funny and smart and beautiful and so kind, and real-me would kick dream-me’s ass if it was possible.” 

Mickey blushed so much about that.  “Yeah, well real-you is a lot better than dream-you,” he smiled.

“Sooo… what you’re saying is that I’m better than anything you could ever dream of?”  He poked at Mickey’s sides, tickling the sensitive skin there that he loved so much.

“Fuckin’ obviously.” Mickey laughed, making a move to tickle Ian right back, and Ian thought he could just kiss Mickey’s face right off.

**Author's Note:**

> smirky-smirkovich.tumblr.com :)


End file.
